Combating School Shootings: An American Report Card
Some of the most significant change can come from survivors of tragedies and the families of those caught in the crossfire. Such is the story of Max Schachter, father of Alex Schachter, one of the 17 students murdered on Valentine’s Day 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The tragedy, along with many others making headlines, has led to some changes to safeguard schools—from the legislative to the technological, from governments to companies and to parents of victims looking to ensure it doesn’t happen to someone else.
More than five years after the shooting, Schachter, along with other survivors and families, toured the school—and saw the remaining telltale signs of the tragedy. All members of Congress have also been invited to tour the building before its demolition.
“I wasn’t prepared for what I walked into,” Schachter told SIGNAL Magazine in an interview. “The amount of blood that was everywhere, you know, the bullet holes and the glass everywhere. It was horrible. It was horrific.” The blood-covered classroom and an English paper Alex had signed before being brutally murdered lay bare a scene Schachter described as a war zone. “I just wish,” he continued, “I wish I could have done more to stop it.”
Ten years ago, nobody wanted to talk about active shooters, much less train or exercise active assailant responses, Brian Harrell, former assistant secretary for Infrastructure Protection at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), wrote in an email to SIGNAL Media. “Today, that culture has changed, albeit slowly, to now incorporate active shooter training and awareness into workplace violence programs. This significant change, driven largely by current events playing out on the news every night, has driven the corporate hunger for this type of preparedness.”
And so, what Schachter couldn’t do before his son’s death spurs him into action today. As he mourns the loss of his son, Schachter works with the White House and federal government to ensure the safety of America’s schools. “You can’t teach dead kids,” he said about his motivation.
“We’ve seen this movie before; we know that the next school mass murderer is already out there … we’ve got to be proactive here,” he added.
“I worked with President Trump, and he liked my idea to create this federal school safety clearinghouse inside CISA, so that’s how SchoolSafety.gov got created,” Schachter said, using the acronym for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The site offers actionable low-cost/no-cost school safety recommendations for the K-12 academic community. Another piece of legislation became law in June 2022, when President Biden signed the bipartisan Safer Communities Act bill into law, which includes the Luke and Alex School Safety Act. Luke Hoyer was a 15-year-old student murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
The bill calls for coordination among the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Education, Health and Human Services and the Justice Department “to assess and identify best practices and recommendations and to establish an advisory board to provide feedback and propose additional recommendations.” The bill appropriates funds across a number of initiatives, including $750 million for states to implement and elevate Extreme Risk Protection Order laws, commonly known as red flag laws, which enable law enforcement and family members to temporarily ban or remove firearms from those who pose a threat to themselves or others, $300 million for programs keeping weapons off school grounds, $1 billion for general mental health programs that also address suicide prevention, and $2 billion for mental health services, staff, counselors and violence prevention efforts in schools.
Schachter’s latest efforts involve creating a policy center to increase congressional involvement in prioritizing school safety and work on the EAGLES Act, which increases funding for the U.S. Secret Service (USSS).
Alyssa’s Law—named after Alyssa Alhadeff, another victim of the Parkland mass murder—has already passed in Texas, New York, New Jersey and Florida. The law requires schools to install silent panic alert systems on teacher mobile devices to have direct communication with law enforcement and first responders.
Involvement in school safety efforts is not, however, a novel initiative for federal agencies.
“Following the Columbine shooting, we published the Safe School Initiative, which was a pioneering research study examining targeted school violence from a behavioral approach,” said USSS Assistant Chief Steven Driscoll, noting the agency’s National Threat Assessment Center, formed in 1998.
Following the 2018 Parkland shooting, the USSS updated its guidance on multidisciplinary school threat assessments.
Through vast amounts of data and further research, the center found that “in every single case, the attackers had displayed concerning behaviors in the community that were observed by other people,” Driscoll stated.
In May, CISA, in collaboration with the USSS, released a Toolkit for Strengthening K-12 Reporting Programs governing bystander reporting practices for early intervention, giving students, teachers and parents a safe avenue to report suspicious activity. The toolkit elevates the well-known “See Something, Say Something” initiative and encourages transparency to create the safest learning environment.
The program is not a one-size-fits-all, however, and schools across the nation can choose the type of platform and communication style that best aligns with their community needs, officials said. Colorado, for example, uses Safe2Tell Colorado, a program that capitalizes on the relationships between police, first responders and school resources officers and the community they serve, and lets users report illegal drug use, cyber-bullying and threats of self-harm.
With each new tragedy, there comes a new call for change.
Joining the conversation, private companies also develop and deploy solutions to protect schools and the nation’s children. Too often, proposed solutions tend to offer a small-picture approach, said Jason Polinski, who co-founded 3D Response Systems in 2015 to help safeguard schools in emergencies and provide pre-preparedness and after-action training.
The 2022 Uvalde, Texas, school shooting, for example, brought on a conversation about single-point entry; Sandy Hook in 2012 prompted visitor management; Columbine in 1999 introduced school lockdowns and law enforcement response protocols. “We keep trying to fix the last thing,” Polinski stated. According to Polinski, there is still much to be done to mitigate acts of violence toward schools. But with time and tenacity, progress can come about, Polinski said. “It took 98 kids to die,” he said of the 1958 school fire that led to mandatory fire codes. “They went from 50-150 deaths per year in fires … to zero.”
Wanting to be part of the solution, he puts his 25-plus years in law enforcement to work training thousands of responders in active shooter response.
His company’s methodology centers on cover, concealment and communication throughout a building and providing a 3D response where each classroom is a safe zone. The entire school is tactically installed with magnets, ballistic panels, mass communications equipment, suspect identification systems, enhanced windows and remote lanyards. This whole-view approach seeks to get first responders to the scene faster.
“With our system, the average was about 40 seconds to locate the suspect in the building; without our system, it was over four minutes,” he told SIGNAL Media.
Companies leveraging modern-day technology include artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to combat the school safety issue.
ZeroEyes, owned by a team of former Navy SEALs, installs its weapon-detection software into camera and security systems already in place. “We have an in-house operation center,” Sam Alaimo, chief revenue officer and co-founder, told SIGNAL Media. “The individuals we have sitting in there are 100% former military veterans and law enforcement personnel. We picked them for two reasons: one, they’re really good in high-stress situations; and two, they’re very good at [detecting] guns.” Working in-house reduces the chances of false positives and minimizes privacy concerns. The technology has resulted in the time between detection and an alert sent to the client in only three to five seconds, Alaimo stated.
Other examples include:
- Actuate AI uses gun detection capabilities and alerts clients on intruder and break-in threats.
- Shooter Detection Systems uses acoustic bang and infrared flash to accurately detect shots fired in indoor or outdoor spaces.
- Omnilert’s mass communication system has been around for decades and has most recently implemented weapons detection capabilities.
For all the legislative and technological advances, however, a change in culture must come first, experts said.
“This problem that we have is never going away,” said Jin Kim, a retired FBI active shooter expert.
Behavioral threat assessment management coupled with intervention, interdiction and interception will help make schools safer, he told SIGNAL Media.
“I just feel, in 2023, in moving forward in this country, this has to be part of what preparedness looks like because it will always come down to a human being and how this human being manifests this anger and resentment towards an institution,” said Kim, one of the first tactical instructors to come from an FBI-led collaboration with the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) at Texas State University.
“Every time one of these things happens, one of the very first things you see in an interview is, ‘We never thought this would happen in our city,’” stated M. Hunter Martaindale, research assistant professor at the Texas State University School of Criminal Justice & Criminology.
Martaindale leads ALERRT, which facilitates active shooter training for law enforcement across the country. What started as a small training facility to prevent the next Columbine became a nationwide effort for a consistent approach in active shooter training.
Using data sets from 520 active attacks since 2000, ALERRT has more than 300 adjunct instructors trained to deliver necessary materials to prepare law enforcement for emergency response.
“Currently, we’re north of 300,000 officers who have been trained over the last 20 years,” said Martaindale, who has a Ph.D. in criminal justice. The number will soon increase due to a recently signed Texas mandate requiring officers to go through 16 hours of ALERRT active shooter training every two years.
Prior to Uvalde, no such mandate existed for the state, and training varied from state agency to agency.
Though a few officers responding to the Robb Elementary shooting had been through sit-and-listen type of active shooter training, none had taken ALERRT training.
“Then you go somewhere like Nashville,” Martaindale explained, referring to the Covenant School shooting in March 2023. “That is a very heavily trained area, and you saw that in response.” Response to the shooting highlighted the benefits of scenario training, as responders effectively detected, approached and took down the suspect.
And while the technology industry continues to develop security capabilities, Martaindale offers that there must be another piece to the security puzzle. “It’s not a tech problem as much as it is a training issue,” he stated.
Additionally, research on lockdown drills is showing a lot of promise, he continued. “There has not been an actual shooter that’s ever breached a locked door,” he stated, noting that although glass has been broken for entry, a locked door has never been broken through by active shooters.
Every second counts, agreed each expert interviewed. If the shooter’s time of entry is delayed and law enforcement has proactive training in place, lives will be saved.
“Having response plans [is] important,” Harrell stated. “But the key to your success will be trained staff and a robust relationship with local first responders.”
For Schachter, the finite amount of money America’s public schools have can be better used for low-cost, no-cost efforts to safeguard students before investing in expensive technologies.
Preparedness matters, and it is far too naïve to think this will never happen in your community. The term ‘better safe than sorry’ perfectly depicts the significance of school safety standards. “Parkland was ranked the safest city in Florida,” Schachter stated.
